An intern’s-eye view on the WOM industry

We wanted to give the floor to our lovely intern Ali, who sadly leaves us this week. We promise we told him he should tell the whole truth about the highs and lows of life as a ‘Head…

Hi, my name is Ali I have just finished my one month work experience stint with 1000heads. I am currently an undergraduate at the University Of Surrey, studying Hospitality & Tourism Management, and taking a placement year in the marketing industry.

For starters, this was a particularly difficult area to break into. Numerous applications, numerous rejections.

However, luckily I was doing some experience with STA Travel when I came across 1000heads, who do the word of mouth work for the company. I was really keen to know more about this complex industry, and hoped it might give me some transferable skills for my own future dream: to own a hotel (hey, come on, a boy’s allowed to dream).

It wasn’t all drinking tea, which is a bonus for an intern – in fact, I’ve worked damn hard – but that means that I have started to learn some seriously useful skills I can carry on to future roles.

My experiences ranged from profiling (where I researched potential voices mostly for STA Travel, as I had the most insight and empathy with this audience), to drafting potential engagements, to learning how to use a host of research tools.

The area of WOM is massive and if I was to be honest, in the first couple of weeks I found it very difficult to understand why businesses pay to “spread the word”, when companies could do it in house. But it didn’t take me long to grasp that frankly most companies just don’t understand this space (or indeed their customers!) well enough. 1000heads know their audience inside out, from long experience but also from robust research without the vague clichés or assumptions some brands seem to trade about consumers out there.

I have also realised that the WOM industry is very fast moving; I saw four people start 1000heads in three weeks, and felt the ongoing buzz in the office about new ideas, tools and approaches. I now leave with a vast of knowledge of the industry and skills which I never thought I would have a month ago as well as catalogue of important contacts.

So it’s goodbye ‘Heads and back to the dissertation – although I’m definitely planning on staying in touch.  I’ll pop in whenever I’m back in London!

Brought into the world on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 and filed under 1000thoughts.